A step-by-step guide

May 2014

By Prayukth K V

Why fail? Everyone is on social media these days

But how many of us are capable of using it to drive business?

Social media marketing requires knowledge of people, technology and trends

Most fail to attain a balance between traditional and social marketing goals

Others fail in understanding the significance of social marketing (in terms of the larger org. goals)

Ways to fail: route 1:Ignore RoI Use the standard excuse – I cannot measure social media

engagement or RoI Avoid using basic inbuilt tools (Facebook analytics) or even

free ones like simplymeasure.com Ignore conversion rates Post-campaign conversations do not mean anything to me Avoid metrics Sentiment monitoring?? What’s that? I will use traditional measurement ideas for social media Social content demand? No idea! Conversational engagement? Sounds like a good idea! Engagement interpretation is of no use to my business

Ways to fail: Route 2: Silos Work in silos within your marketing team

Let each marketing division decide its priorities and enforce them

Avoid collaboration and focus on getting content out faster; ignore quality

No need to leverage the inherent strengths of teams (such as web marketing for building communities)

Build communication barriers to prevent cross pollination of ideas

Ways to fail: Route 3: competition You don’t feel the need to track competition on social

media networks

Absolutely ignore interactions of your social community members with competitors

You have no idea what a private list on twitter is

Why should I be bothered if my brand pops up in social conversations within my competitors social net?

Ways to fail: route 4: Influencers Influencers don’t mean anything to me

I should be more worried about disgruntled customers than influencers

Nope I don’t measure influencer sentiment

Forget sentiment; I haven't even mapped my influencers

I don’t know how to assign weights to my social media participants and interactions

Ways to fail: route 5: myopic I follow a post-to-post approach

No idea what the level of engagement will be a month down the line

Social crisis management? Nope, haven’t heard of it

Long term social engagement is for others; I have enough participants on my social networks

I have a single strategy for all my social channels

I do ignore many conversations that mention my brand or product

Disgruntled customer? I will tell her that her problem will be fixed that’s it!

So, have you figured out how to fail on social media yet? Here is one final tip!

Just do what others are doing on social media!